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Sept. 2, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:35:38
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #991
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*Music* Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 2nd of September 2024, and I am joined by Stelios and Bo, the Bo Hawk.
*laughs* Sorry, I'm bringing it back now, the introductions, although I'm sort of recycling old names.
The Boa Constrictor.
That's right, yeah.
The Boalistic Missile.
And today we're going to be talking about the rise of the German right, particularly the AFD.
Stelios is going to be telling us about Brazil and their war against Elon, and Bo is going to be telling us about how the polls are all lies.
Sort of.
Kind of.
We do have an announcement and that is that Islander merch is now leaving the merch store in a week's time so get what you want as soon as possible before it's gone.
I actually wear some of the Islander t-shirts outside of work just for my own pleasure not being a business shill purely because I like them so they get my seal of approval and that's not just because you know They make us money, but also they're nice.
You walk down the road and women look at you wearing Islander t-shirts.
That's right, Stelios.
It's definitely the t-shirt, you know.
There's a kind of mystique there.
It's like, what is this Islander magazine?
Starts up conversations everywhere.
I can't move.
But yes, t-shirts are there.
I quite like them.
Please check them out.
It's also a good way of supporting us if, you know, you want something in return.
But anyway, enough of that.
Let's talk about Germany, shall we?
So there's been much discussion about this historic victory for the AFD in Germany and what this basically means is that the AFD, the alternative for Germany, has won its first state election and that is the state of Thuringia, I think it's pronounced.
Sorry if I'm mispronouncing it, Germans.
I am English.
It's expected that I get language wrong and it'd be poor form to correct that trend now.
But yes, they got 32.8% of the vote.
In that state, which is well ahead of the second best, the Christian Democrat Union, with 23.6%.
So that's quite a significant margin of victory there, isn't it?
It is, and it was specifically with young people.
Young people, I think, voted around 37%.
37, 38 something like that isn't it?
18 to 24 is actually the bracket where they're doing the best and the older someone gets the less likely they are to vote for AFD which sort of turns on its head the notion that you become more conservative as you get older because actually it's the other way around and it's the older people that are ruining everything for the younger people.
I feel like it may be Germany, that boomers in Germany I think may be sort of the worst affected by a sort of boomer truth, right?
They've really since day one been hammered with guilt or whatever.
More than anywhere else in the world perhaps.
If you prioritise the wants and needs of Germany, your evil is basically the sentiment behind that, right?
But another province that's worth mentioning as well.
Here is the province of Fringia.
I'm sure I'm mispronouncing that, sorry.
But one I will not mispronounce is this one, Saxony.
This is another province where there have been elections going on and Projections from this morning suggest that the CDU, the Christian Democratic Union, is going to win but by a narrow margin.
So 31.9 percent and the AFD are predicted to get about 30.6 to 30.7 percent.
This is massive!
It's still very close isn't it?
And it's also worth mentioning as well the CDU have held this state since the reunification of Germany in 1990.
And since the last election in 2019, the AFD have gained around 3%, whereas the CDU have lost 0.2%.
Yeah, they're a traditional power party, whereas AFD is just rising right now.
It's interesting, I wanted to ask actually, I don't know if you'd know, but that would clearly have been in East Germany.
Yes.
The other one, Lotharingia, oh sorry, Thuringia.
Lotharingia!
Sorry, only a thousand years out of date there.
Was that in East or West Germany?
I sort of guess East Germany but I don't know.
It's obviously geographically Central Germany but I think it would have still been in the East.
I'm sure there'll be some Germans that will say so in the comments.
I am googling it right now.
We've got a live fact check.
Weather Thuringia was behind the Iron Curtain and it says it was located in East Central Germany during the Cold War.
It was part of Soviet occupied zone of Germany.
So another interesting thing about Saxony is the BSW which is a left-wing party that actually came out of the former Communist Party in East Germany but they are anti-immigration as well and they also did well.
I think they came third in in Saxony.
I think it was good that they added the W because otherwise you know the BS party doesn't sound.
You know what, I'd be very interested.
I've not heard that.
I wonder what their actual take is, what their angle is on that.
Are they full-blown commies or are they just socialists?
Socially conservative but economically socialist.
Okay.
So they're against giving Ukraine weapons which I thought was interesting from the left.
You do get it though, don't you?
Yeah.
But this is also interesting as well because it's splitting the left-wing vote between multiple different parties because it's a recent splinter group and It's also worth mentioning We have a store and it's selling some t-shirts at the minute All of the Islander merch that we've been selling and if you live under a rock This, this wonderful magazine.
Yes, we have t-shirts associated with it.
Some of the graphics inside the magazine have been turned into t-shirts.
And you'll no longer be able to buy these by the end of the week.
So if you would like a nice t-shirt, I personally wear some of these t-shirts outside of the office, just in my daily life.
So I do recommend them.
And you want to support us, this is a good way of doing so.
So I just thought I'd throw that one out there.
Limited edition.
In a few years they'll be worth thousands.
Yeah, there'll be multi-millionaire collectors trying to buy your t-shirt off of you, I'm sure.
It's as rare as champagne off the Titanic.
And even more sought after.
So it's worth mentioning a little bit about the German system because processing these election results needs some sort of background so... Can I ask just before you go on?
It's the guy that won, is it the equivalent of an MP or is he like a mayor?
It's the state legislature.
I'm actually going to go into explaining this right now.
So Germany has a sort of federal system, it's structured federally in other words, and this grants a reasonable level of autonomy to its states in areas such as things like education, policing, culture and infrastructure and things like that.
Not too dissimilar to some, you know, aspects of the UK system as well.
And states also have representation in a federal legislative body that plays a central role in, believe it or not, federal legislation.
And these... Is that like the rashtag that it's... what that is then?
Well, it's got its own name that's distinct from that.
There's obviously the national parliament, but there's also federal ones.
But anyway, these elections are also very significant in setting the tone of the national elections, because of course, these elections are ongoing.
And, you know, the best way of predicting what happens in a national election is looking at what happened in these state elections.
And they're also a proving ground for policies at a national level.
So the fact that the AFD have got their foot in the door and they can start saying, look, we can have results here.
Our policies actually do work.
That is if, you know, things go well, of course, then that is quite important as well.
So each of the 16 states in Germany holds elections for their state parliament.
And this usually happens every five years, although some hold them every four years.
They're allowed to do that, such as Bremen.
And therefore, not every single state has one at once.
It's also worth mentioning that these are held using a proportional voting system, which means that if a party is to assume the position of the state government, they will usually have to be in coalition with another party.
me.
So, does that answer what you were pretty much going to ask?
I think so, yeah.
Okay.
So, what is important is that Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor of Germany, is urging German parties to exclude the AFD from any coalitions to prevent them from being able to form governments, basically.
And he belongs to the Social Democratic Party, which are obviously opposed to the AFD.
Need I say that?
He's gonna pull a Macron.
Yeah, there are parallels and I did think to mention Macron actually that Macron aligned himself in France with the left to try and keep the right out and it seems to be that a similar thing is going on in Germany as well.
However it may be difficult in the future for parties like his to actually secure places in government because with the rise of the AFD and also the BSW on the left splitting the right and left vote
The majorities are going to be much less and there might be more coalitions not less in which case party may simply say well actually we do want to be in government and therefore we will go in coalition with one of these parties even though they're being gatekept out of power.
I don't think that the notion of a coalition is irreparably bad in this case, so long as there is a minimum amount of agreement on some things, like open borders policies and stuff.
Reject them, you know?
Yeah, well, I think that the entire German system is founded on collaboration in terms of political parties, isn't it?
So there's a certain inevitability to it.
But if they all agree amongst themselves to keep the AfD out, That is a kind of underhanded way of minimising their political influence but it's also an act of desperation because they're not doing that to other political parties, they go into coalition with potentially competitors.
I heard it said back in the Merkel days, a number of times when they worried that the AFD might win one tiny thing.
They would, all of them would say openly, yeah we will do anything, we will form any coalition, any combination of any parties, to make sure they don't get a sniff of power at all costs.
That's ridiculous isn't it?
Of course, that has actually been played out with Macron recently, well you mentioned Macron, so yeah they'll do that in Germany, 100% they'll do that.
We're going to look at some examples in Germany in a minute.
Can I say one thing before we do this?
So Macron also risks being impeached now?
Does he?
Yeah.
Right.
So it doesn't work well for him.
So the media have also been carrying water for this.
So what is interesting about this headline from Politico?
German far-right wins first major election since World War Two.
Why is World War Two significant in this instance?
Oh right, they're trying to suggest that there's some sort of ideological free line between the National Socialist Party of the mid-century Germans, the moustache man, and the AFD, aren't they?
That's what they're trying to do by association.
But of course they can't outrightly just say these people are, you know, armband enthusiasts.
They're not going to say that, are they?
Because that might be libelous.
And so they're using methods like this to try and basically smear them as much as they possibly can.
That's a funny one I haven't heard before.
Armband enthusiasts.
I just came up with it on the spot actually.
Very good.
Also, the Times here.
Germany far right has first big win since Nazis.
The Times being very explicit there in their association.
Of course this isn't the case and we're going to be looking at what the AFD actually advocates for soon enough.
In the past they've been designated as extremists and interestingly enough the two regions where they were designated extremists are the two where they've done the best.
Saxony-Anhalt, of course Saxony, and Beringia.
So they've come first in a province in which they were designated an extremist group.
It shows how much that designation is worth, doesn't it?
The power of Streisand.
It also shows that a lot of people right now are not trusting the establishment.
And they see it this way.
So if the establishment, however we define it, constantly demonizes one party, and people think that the establishment doesn't promote their interests, they're gonna start becoming very interested in that party.
Well I think also people are losing faith in institutions more generally because they realise that institutions are made up of people.
People can be biased and be politically partisan.
I don't know if I agree entirely on this because we cannot but have institutions.
I think that they're a bit selective.
People used to believe that they could do no wrong and I think that they've come to a more realistic perspective.
So I think in many ways Germany is a sort of a more accelerated version of Britain in all sorts of senses one that they've been deracinated and gaslit more than we have mm-hmm and guilt-tripped more than we have and also flooded with Syrians and Afghans and everything more than we have right so I think I feel like they are a bit further down the road than we are mm-hmm in in most senses Yeah, well that's certainly the case.
And like the Brits, not actually inclined to get angry and go mad and riot and stuff.
Not actually inclined that way, naturally or anything.
They tend to be quite civil in their society.
Yeah, extremely civil.
It takes a lot before they sort of go berserk.
But they've been pushed harder.
Perhaps the hardest in Europe, or Western Europe.
I would say so, yeah.
And there definitely is a limit to how much people can be pushed.
Sure, of course, always.
Always a limit.
So there's also this as well, which hasn't helped the media representation.
So this is, I'm going to mispronounce his name, sorry, Bjorn Hocker?
I don't know, but that's the best guess.
I think it's Bjorn Höcke.
Sorry if I mispronounce it.
You've got Brits and Greeks I'm afraid.
Stelios, you did a bit of German didn't you?
But anyway, he was the chair and still may well be.
of the AFD in Thuringia and he was found guilty of intentionally deploying a slogan used by the Nazi Party's parliamentary wing which is the SA and what that was was everything for Germany Which doesn't sound like one of the worst ones to me.
But yes, Germany has very strict laws and this sort of thing.
You know, you can't do the Roman salute and things like that.
There are lots of laws that have been put in place to prevent this sort of thing.
And this is a very easy thing that people can point to and say, look, see, they are the same.
But he just claims it was an honest mistake.
I don't know.
I'd be quite surprised if you grew up in Germany and you didn't know the association of that slogan.
But even so, I still think people should be free to say it if they want to.
It's that classic thing where we're in the point where any patriotism, any nationalism, even very, very weak milquetoast nationalism, any tip of the cap to nationalism is, well that's what the NSDAP were, that's what Hitler was.
So you're the same as Hitler.
You want concentration camps.
Because you don't hate your own country?
I mean, that's where we are, isn't it?
Yeah, well, it's pretty flagrant as well, the way in which they're going about it.
It's so in your face that even to your normal person, they're like, hang on a minute, maybe, you know, my country isn't so bad.
And I think that it doesn't really resonate with ordinary people in a way that they would hope.
It is worth mentioning as well the AFD's manifesto is now available you don't need a VPN anymore and setting it to Germany to be able to read it and it's also in English so if you are curious about what they believe here it is so I've previously pointed out I think in a segment with you Stelios that Their views on democracy and their sort of core values, which is chapter one of their manifesto, like they want a leaner government.
They want less big government.
They want a greater separation of powers.
Are you sure, Josh?
Are we going to get banned just for just mentioning it?
Limit the influence and power of political parties.
It's so radical.
They want free elections of candidates.
They want to curtail lobbyism.
I mean, this doesn't sound like the actions of the NSDAP, does it?
Where's the mention of Labour's from?
Yeah, it's funny that, but yes, there is a reasonable section on immigration here.
No regular immigration, sort of talking about asylum, immigration from other EU countries.
It's all pretty normal stuff.
The AFD, to my mind, look like a classically liberal party.
To call them far-right or hard-right or extreme-right or even National Socialists is so far off the mark from what they're putting forward that it's ridiculous.
I'll read it and see if there's any mentioning of the word Ubermensch.
There's not.
So it's also worth mentioning polling at the minute.
This is the the National Parliament voting intention so the AFD are polling second.
And the CDU is still pretty static.
This is just over the course of, you know, a few months really, a year or so.
And I don't see them necessarily closing the gap here.
However, they may be able to drag the CDU rightwards and get some concessions in terms of immigration, perhaps.
We'll have to see how it goes because they are also trying to persecute them, obviously.
It started with them.
It started in 2015 with Merkel, who I think was in CDU.
Yes, that's right.
Yeah.
Also, foreshadowing my segment, We really trust what Politico is telling us here?
Not really, but a lot of the polls seem to be indicating similar things and I think that there is a reasonable cohort of people that are still voting for the CDU.
And it's also worth mentioning this, if we can zoom out a little bit from this Samson, I don't have the means to do so.
So this is Saxony of course one of the states that we talked about where the AFD narrowly lost out.
So the AFD are that blue line there and the CDU are that black line there.
We can see since 1994 all the way to 2024 over the past 30 years That the CDU have been on a trend of decline and it looks like since September of 2014 the AFD have been on the rise and it's to the point now where it looks like the two lines are going to intersect and the AFD are going to take over in the future if you're taking this sort of long view of German politics.
I think that this actually might be what other people have been looking at in the sort of uh german regime if you will and saying hang on a minute if we let this carry on the afd are only going to continue to gain so we need to act now to keep them out otherwise they're going to continue to to be a thorn in our side basically and upset our plans but this sort of it indicates some sort of positive change in germany that people are moving towards the afd to alternative right-wing parties rather than the establishment ones which is promising and
And we have to mention, if we take this into account, and I think that there is some plausibility to it, that in a space of 10 years, because it's September 14 and now it's September 24, they nearly tripled their numbers from a 10% or around to 30%.
Yes.
So even if the trend slows down, it's still pretty strong, isn't it?
It is.
I mean, tripling your electoral base in 10 years, it's an important thing.
It's an achievement.
That's a good observation.
And also, I read a lot of people who claim to be surprised and they're saying, you know, the AFD is rising.
Yeah, it's rising because of the policies that the EU is promoting the last 10 years.
And then no wonder.
Yeah, if you control immigration and stop suicidal green energy policy, that's how they're going to stop the far right, as they call it.
You cannot love the cause and hate the effect.
I mean, that's how it goes, if you're a rational human being.
It's also interesting to see, between about 2014 and 16 or 17, that the CDU fall off the cliff a bit, or they rebound, at the same time as the AFD get a spike.
What happened?
Something happened around then.
Was that when Germany started realizing that they'd been flooded by economists?
I'm not entirely sure.
It might be what happened around that time.
Well, wasn't it when Merkel... When was it when Merkel opened the doors and just let in a million Syrians in one go?
I think it could be, yeah, actually.
Yeah, yeah, it could be it.
But anyway, the final thing I wanted to end on is that Brandenburg is set to have its election on the 22nd of September and the AFD are now leading the polls.
So this is something to pay attention to because it could be that gradually the AFD are going to start taking over uh state governments and this is significant as well because of course Brandenburg surrounds Berlin and uh it'd be very symbolic to uh to take that that province I think and so yes some positive news obviously keep an eye on the persecution of the AFD because I think they are perfectly legitimate political party I think they have a right to exist
Um, they seem to me to be classically liberal, uh, with some socially conservative policies.
Certainly not, uh, you know, the, they're not national socialists, very far from it.
And, um, I hope them, I hope they do well.
I hope it all goes well for Germany because I don't think the German people deserve what has been imposed upon them.
One thing to mention, about a year ago now I suppose, something like that, I interviewed Peter Bowringer.
Remember that at all?
So that's on, he's one of the chairman of, he's one of the vice-chairmen of AFD.
I think they've got loads of vice-chairmen.
It's worth mentioning we've spoke to a few people from the AFD over the years haven't we, on our website, so if you want to check those out.
And he's a perfectly reasonable, rational, completely normal, Dare I say, even Milktooth, I was far too extreme for him.
I was saying stuff and he was like... So, they're normal guys, they just don't want to see their country utterly annihilated from within, right?
That's all they are.
Absolutely.
So we've got some rumble chats I believe.
So Keith for $20, thank you very much, says if you can't answer this it's alright but how many of the Lotus Eaters will be, want to be visiting the Reform UK conference in Birmingham?
I'll be there at least.
I don't know.
I don't know whether people are actually going to that or not.
I think Carl is going.
Okay.
I think, I might be wrong, so sorry Carl if I'm wrong about that.
I think Carl said he was going, that he was going to take a camera.
But I'm not going.
I think me and Dan, and probably Carl, but Carl doesn't care.
Certainly me and Dan will be persona non grata.
I wouldn't be welcome there.
Absolutely wouldn't be welcome.
I've got better ways to spend my time, to be honest.
I don't really trust reform that much, to be honest.
Yeah, they're containment as far as I can tell.
Where has Nigel been these last few weeks?
He's been useless, yeah.
Where has he been?
He should be banging that drum about the slaughter of the innocents in Southport.
He's been more concerned about preserving his own skin, really, hasn't he?
Yeah, keeping his powder dryer, yeah.
So Laura Koenigsberg can't have a pop at him.
So Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony are not the same thing.
I know.
They've got different names.
Old Eagle.
There's the rise of the AFD coincides with the youth becoming able to vote.
The wussified older Germans are dying out.
The Germans who hate themselves aren't reproducing, which leaves a vacuum for the youth.
That seems to be what is going on, isn't it?
Thank you very much.
Right, let's sort the technology first.
The passing of the mouse, the sacred custom at Loadseater.
Yeah, I'll shill the merch.
Right.
Right.
A few days ago, X was banned in Brazil.
And this was the outcome of a feud that has lasted for a long time now between Elon Musk and Alexander DeMoraes, who is one of the judges in Brazil.
And I think it is obvious that it's not just one judge.
There's a whole Brazilian government behind him.
Right, here we have this post.
Bolsonaro is speaking about the Brazilian Supreme Court banning X and VPNs.
X being forced out of Brazil is yet another hard blow to our freedom.
Today we woke up without X and they once accused me of being a dictator.
This is interesting because I remember some time ago there was one progressive you know so-called progressive I knew who just instantly out of nowhere just said obviously we're supporting Lula.
Said no no there's nothing's obvious about it.
Just why should I support Lula or something?
Wait what are his policies?
Socialist aren't they?
Yeah sort of borderline communist or something.
Just not my cup of tea.
Right, here we have the main antagonist in this case.
We have Alexandre de Moraes, who is... He does look uniquely evil, doesn't he?
Just to throw it out there.
Save everyone commenting on, you know... Brazil's Supreme Federal Court Minister.
They say that he looks like a supervillain.
We are going to say a bit more than that, because a lot of people have focused on how he looks like.
Darth Potato, yeah.
Anyone that's bald gets accused of being a supervillain.
Sometimes I get that.
I look like a Bond villain.
I don't know what they mean by that.
Maybe you have a cat and you're stroking the cat there.
A white cat with a blue and green eye.
It's that big red button that you press and the floor falls through.
Yeah.
It burns.
That's what does it.
So we have an article here by Huffington Post.
You could read it and basically it says that there's a long feud going about for about a month now.
And what happened is that Demarias asked Elon to ban and suspend some accounts and name a representative.
Elon declined that.
As we will see in due course, one of the persons that the judge asked Elon to censor is a senator, a Brazilian senator.
So it's definitely political censoring.
And basically at some point Elon didn't appoint a representative.
Demarais gave him a 24-hour deadline.
Elon didn't do anything.
And basically he said that we are going to ban X from Brazil.
And a lot of people are using VPNs to enter X, and they say that we are going to impose a fine of around $8,900 daily to people and businesses who use VPN to access.
So there's a couple of things to be said here.
The first thing is that the legal representative for X or for Elon, that seemed like they were trying to get Elon to offer up a sacrificial lamb, basically, as my understanding.
And two, anyone that wants to ban VPNs does not have your best interests at heart.
They want to ban you anonymously accessing stuff.
As is your right.
You have a right to a private life under pretty much every form of constitution ever.
And if people don't want that, then they're out to harm you.
Exactly, and I think the same goes with censorship at large, because people who want to deprive us of speech, and of the right to speak, also want to deprive us of the right to point out abuse of power.
This is pretty much news to me, I've heard rumblings, seen a few headlines, but to hear that Brazil, there's just a blanket ban on all VPNs?
Any type of VPN a blanket fine if you use one?
Fine is for people who, not for people who use VPN, but for people who use VPN to access X. Right, okay.
So still a blanket ban of Twitter though?
Yes.
That is, that is definitely, definitely dictatorial.
Yeah, dictatorial censorship.
The Terry Gilliam film is looking all the more sort of prophetic now isn't it?
Yeah, we have here a former judge of the Brazilian Supreme Court who said basically that she was the first and only active judge in Brazil to denounce the abuses of the court and she says essentially that it was clear that what would happen if De Moraes continued in his position would be a loss in freedoms.
And you can see her here, she's talking about De Moraes and how the Brazilian Supreme Court can be weaponized against people's freedoms.
Right, we have here Michael Schellenberger talking about thousands of Brazilians resisting the orders and using VPNs to access X. And we also have here someone in Brazil who is very open about using VPNs.
We have here Marcel Van Hatten.
Who is a political scientist and journalist and he is basically saying that this tweet may cost me almost 10,000 US dollars but I am tweeting this with VPN and he is essentially saying that the government is acting in a very censorious and authoritarian manner.
So I think that's a brave post.
It's a brave post.
Right.
We have here also Michael Schellenberger saying that what is particularly interesting is that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have made virtually zero statements about this.
I wonder why?
What a surprise.
What a surprise.
Well obviously this works in their favour doesn't it?
It damages Elon's reputation and it's one of the arms of the regime that aren't explicitly controlled because of course we know that the FBI for example is politically partisan because they've repeatedly
ruled in favor of the democrats and they were in communication with all of the social media companies to suppress things like the hunter biden laptop story which they lied about being russian disinformation as well as a whole host of other things you know that fauci parody accounts being taken down during the pandemic even though they were parody accounts just anything that could potentially damage the reputation of the regime and their schemes was suppressed so this is great for them
there are definitely vested interests on a global level to bring down x because x is one of the platforms of free speech and you can use free speech to point out abuses of power and And we see throughout the world, especially in the Western world, because in the non-Western world things are a bit more authoritarian by nature, I think.
It's not a weird thing to say.
We see, especially in the Western world, a very organized effort to do this, and a very organized effort to criticize and demonize anyone who would point out abuse of power as, you know, far-right racists and extremists and whatever.
Right, so there are two things here that arise, two issues that need to be discussed, and obviously I'm no legal expert and I'm not going to be commenting about the issues and intricacies of Brazilian law, but one question here is the question of whether Brazilian law has been violated by X, and the other question is obviously the not insignificant question of free speech, which we will talk about during the end of the segment.
So, we have here a lot of people who are saying that Elon already has violated Brazilian law.
And there is a whole host of people, celebrities and all sorts of intellectuals, you know, especially guardian types, Mark Ruffalo, a famous intellectual.
We'll go to Guardian in the next slide.
Mark Ruffalo steeped in political theory.
I mean, the political theory of contemporary left isn't that weird to get steeped into.
They really bring down intellectuals to the level of people who have no You know, we are not initiated into the ways of thinking, but Mark Ruffalo say here, but essentially that he's a weird and entitled billionaire tech bro, tax him heavily.
And what I want to say this, I find this particularly appalling because all these, you know, sensitive leftist progressive types.
They constantly make it, especially when they're talking about Latin America, and they do so also when it comes to Venezuela.
They claim to speak in favor of the people, but they constantly reduce all questions to dilemmas between the government of a Latin American country and someone from outside.
So, for instance, in Venezuela, they constantly talk about the Venezuelan people, but they reduce everything to a question of U.S.
versus Maduro.
And here they reduce everything to a question of Elon versus Brazilian government.
Well, if you make a distinction between the people and the people who rule them, it weakens the power that they have over them, doesn't it?
Exactly, yeah.
And that's why in mainstream media you constantly hear people saying Brazil rather than the Brazilian government, and do so the same for any country in order to blur the lines between the state and the people.
I'm not represented in my parliament, so why would anyone else be?
We have here Robert Reich in The Guardian.
Now he's talking about it.
He says he may be the richest man in the world but that doesn't mean we're powerless to stop him.
And essentially he's saying that X has been used to spread disinformation, hatred.
He's talking about how X was used in England during the Southport tragedies and what came afterwards.
Essentially he says that He's rapidly transforming his enormous wealth, he's the richest person in the world, into a huge source of unaccountable political power that's now backing Trump and other authoritarians around the world.
I find this very appalling and one-sided for one reason, because when it comes to... I really hate the bigotry of people who call themselves anti-authoritarians, because I call myself an anti-authoritarian as well.
But one of the tests I use to see if someone is really honest about it is to see if they care about authoritarianism from both sides.
So you have people right now who constantly focus on the duties of people.
Whether they're rich or not, they constantly focus on the duties of the governed and they constantly try to say that anyone who insists that those who govern do have duties to their own people is a far-right extremist and a racist.
When they do this, they're absolutely not against authoritarianism, they're pro their own authoritarianism.
Of course, yeah, that Robert Reich is An absolute scumbag, a mentalist, an actual mentalist.
Oh he's worried about Trump and authoritarians around the world.
I don't hear him saying anything about Xi Jinping.
Can't remember the last time he said anything about the authoritarianism in China.
Yeah, well that's where he gets his economics from because he's certainly no economist that I respect.
He uploads to Twitter all the time as well, so the notion that it's something evil and yet he's on there posting his nonsense.
You constantly see that.
We saw that also with Ian Dund, and who was the other... Careful how you pronounce his name.
I use that D. That's getting cropped out of context.
Paul Mason, all these people, they constantly focus on the responsibilities of people to obey the government, irrespective of whether the laws and decrees are sensible.
And they always say that anyone who would dare to insist that governments do have responsibilities towards their own people is a bad person.
And I think that they are bad people.
A filth.
Yeah.
Right, so Elon here is responding to some people who are again saying that somehow the Brazilian law has been violated and he has set up an account, or not necessarily Elon, but he has marketed it and pointed people's attention to it, called Alexander Files.
That is an account that is specifically dedicated to criticizing Alexander Demarais.
Okay, says this account will reveal the unlawful directive issues to X by Alexander Demarais.
And they have here something that is really interesting and they're saying look at the order from Demarais in the left and also the law of Brazil in the right.
Now they have this in Portuguese, which I think is the language of Brazil, but I do remember that there was a translated version.
Right, so There is an ongoing dispute also about whether Brazilian law has been violated or not, and whether the decrees of... But by X. By X, and also the other side insists that perhaps it is the decrees of demorais that go against the laws of Brazil, but also the spirit of the laws of any free country, or any country that wants to call itself free.
Right, so we have here something else.
A lot of people are criticizing Elon for allegedly doxxing the accounts he didn't want to suspend.
But I think that there may be another way to look at it.
Because if we point out here, we will see that There is the Order of the Supreme Court and the seven accounts followed by names.
Now the issue here is that I wouldn't necessarily call that doxxing when it comes to the government because the government already has the names of these people and with respect to plenty of them they asked for specific names.
So the government already knew.
Now, speaking of that, I don't know exactly if this is the best way to go about it.
Maybe they could have blurred the names or something.
That's just a question to put out because I want to show you a lot of the stuff.
Sorry, just to be clear, the names of who?
The accounts in which the Brazilian judiciary wanted censored, I think.
Yes, you see here we have the Supreme Tribunal Federal.
And they are saying essentially that they want to ban these accounts.
So this is the Brazilian government asking Elon to yeet these people?
Yes, and they already have the names of these people.
Now I don't know if with the account maybe they could have blurred the names or something because obviously in Brazil there are people who are pro the government and maybe the safety of these people is at stake.
This is just something to bear in mind.
Right, here we go to the... So what I wanted to say with this section is that it isn't by any means obvious that X has banned, has violated Brazilian law, as a lot of people want to make us think.
Now we go to the issue of free speech, which isn't particularly small, I think.
And I would say that essentially calls for censoring free speech are calls for criminalizing the means by which people can expose actual and potential abuses of power by governments.
So if people are censorious, yeah, I'm not going to show mercy.
I'm not going to be well disposed towards them because when they want to deprive me of the means of exposing their actual or potential abuses of power, well, I just don't trust them.
Well, what it fundamentally boils down to is the enemies of ordinary people using their elected power to silence any criticism that would be of concern to ordinary people.
It's antithetical to this notion of representative democracy.
And it's not just an issue of theory.
We also see how it plays out here in Europe.
We live there every day.
People who just dare to say that governments have responsibilities towards us, towards their own people, we're branded as bad people.
And that's appalling.
We have here, ADF says that the state of freedom of expression in Brazil is dire, censorship has been normalized, and there are widespread and lawful restrictions of online speech and criminal proceedings to chill and penalize online expression by journalists, influencers, and politicians.
Can I make a broader point?
Yeah, of course.
Broadly speaking, censorship doesn't work, certainly not for very long.
If you look at some of the most censorious societies that have ever been, perhaps Maoist era China or Stalinist era Soviet Union, or even if you go back centuries, go back to sort of the Papal States at the height of their censorship against Luther or something,
It might work briefly if you really crack down on it really crack down you know smash up any means of reprinting the information and kill anyone that found propagating it and stuff okay maybe for a bit but eventually the truth will out nearly always we know what happened in Maoist era China now we know all the crimes of Stalin really we know all the attempts that failed for censorship throughout Throughout the centuries, more or less.
They're not going to be able to do it, even if Twitter disappeared.
Elon and Twitter disappeared tomorrow.
It's not going to stop people exchanging information.
Again, if you look at the Soviet Union, perhaps a bit after Stalin, you know, it's a very, very, very, very censorious police state.
It doesn't stop people, underground journalists, it doesn't stop people talking.
So they're not going to be able to do it.
The Brazilian government's not going to be able to stop people from exchanging information, from noticing reality and talking about it amongst themselves.
Whether online or not.
The thing that comes to mind is that a lot of Western governments are doing this and they obviously know that this doesn't work because we've got so many examples throughout history and part of me has been entertaining the idea that maybe they only need it to work for the short term and it won't matter by the time people find out.
Maybe maybe and also counterpoint just to against what I just said there yeah on some level it can work quite well for example the the the laptop from hell you know if you can censor it in just enough yeah plus just enough doubt in people's mind for a window of time then it can achieve some of its aims an intended effect that we can't go into because of certain guidelines and places where this goes out Sorry.
I just wanted to make sure.
You're not wrong.
You're not wrong.
Don't want to get us in trouble.
Here we have a counter-argument to what I just said.
They have from Creaky News and they say that the arrest of Telegram's CEO and Brazil's ban of X are more about tech companies flaunting their unchecked power than they are about freedom of speech.
Now, one thing.
You could say that to a level, obviously, the more power you have, the more you can abuse it.
But the same goes for mainstream outlets and governments.
So that's very one-sided.
People who say, obviously, the more power you have, and if you are the world's richest man, you do have power.
And it doesn't mean that you can always necessarily use it for good.
You can use it for good, you can use it for bad.
But the thing is that if what is interesting here is that a lot of mainstream outlets and a lot of governments are attacking Elon's ex and Elon Musk personally, in this case, and in doing so, yet again, they are making it all about the responsibilities of people.
Towards governments, never about governments towards their own people.
The question of what responsibilities and duties governments have towards their own people is being completely thrown away by this rhetoric.
Yes, the more power you have, the more you can use it, and the more you can use it for better or worse.
I trust Elon Musk more than I trust my government.
Same, because he hasn't tried to censor me.
And I don't exactly trust Elon Musk that much, to be fair.
Yeah, obviously.
So just being pro Elon Musk here doesn't mean that you have to be a fanboy saying that Elon Musk can do no wrong.
Anyone with power that can do right or wrong.
Of course.
It does seem to me very clear that what's going on here is simply that Elon isn't towing the line, the message.
He's not on board with their megalomania, whatever it is, whatever the grand plan is, is to censor the whole world, certainly the West, or even most of the world actually.
He's not on board with that program.
It's just as simple as that.
If he was, if he was pliant a bit more like Zuck, or someone even more pliant than that, Then there wouldn't be this outrage.
There wouldn't be a problem.
Exactly, yeah.
So it's simply that, isn't it?
They want to make alternative media into an extension of mainstream media.
We have here the one meme to end with, Brazil is facing a censorship crisis that threatens our democracy, free speech and the checks and balances between the branches of government.
And what I want to say here is that it's just, it is ironic, but to be expected at this point, because leftists are constantly talking about democracy and their democracy.
But you can't have democracy without dialogue.
And you don't have to think that democracy even is the best system to say this.
You can't have democracy without dialogue.
You can't have dialogue without free speech.
So if you are against free speech, you're against democracy.
It's just as simple as that.
And here we have by Royce Jacob again pointing out that there is a globally synchronized operation of people who are basically saying Elon Musk and X is a threat to our democracy.
Meaning that our is something quite different than what the people would use to say.
Because it's an our democracy that excludes people.
And we see this because all of these people are constantly trying to tell us that if we demand things from the government, if we constantly saying that the government has duties towards us, we are brandished as bad people.
Have these people even read Locke?
No.
The social contractor.
Vintage Carl Benjamin quote there.
The responsibilities of governments, have they even I don't think so.
But some of them may have, but they have the Marxist interpretation.
It's like the Roussonian version of Locke, where the government can do anything, actually.
Yes.
Yeah.
Right.
So before we finish this segment, we have a brilliant announcement to make.
The Islander merch is not going to be along with us anymore.
So you have about a week to enter a website in this link we have here and watch our wonderful merch.
And we have t-shirts, we have mugs, we have posters.
Brilliant stuff.
Do check them.
I also have that t-shirt and wear it myself outside of work.
And we have all kinds of sizes.
We have small, medium, large, XL.
2XL, 3XL!
It's a TV, late night TV advert.
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Do check it, thank you very much.
3XL, you could just wear it as a... XXL!
As like just a night shirt.
Or from an aeroplane, you know, you'll survive.
We have the quantity button here, you can buy one, you can buy two, you can buy three.
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Right, thank you.
We've got some comments there for you.
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A-O-F-E-M-B.
How do you say that word?
O-A-F-E-M-B.
Josh knows the pronunciations.
Yeah.
The Australian... Donation for ten dollars.
Yeah, thank you.
The Australian Prime Minister has crossed swords with Elon.
Our government wants to get rid of X. We had a terrorism incident and the government wanted to hide it.
It ended up being all over X.
I think that this is a pattern that I'm noticing.
The Shadowband for $10.
Thank you.
If I donate on the website, do you get more money than if I donate on Rumble?
Yes, I think so.
Rumble takes a cut and I think the donations via our website are more direct.
I don't know whether Both are okay, apparently, according to Samson.
Samson has spoken.
The disembodied voice of God.
Yeah.
Stroke out producer Samson.
Yeah, the bush has spoken.
Bold Eagle 1787.
A counterpoint to the morons who think X being banned and Telegram CEO being arrested is a good thing.
Why do you not care about big tech flaunting their power to keep regimes in power?
Hypocrites.
Yeah, as if big tech isn't involved in mainstream media or something.
Just come on.
Take it away Bo.
OK, have I got control of... OK, I've got control of the mouse.
Alright, let's just talk a little bit about polls and polling.
Poles, they're good people.
Winged Hussars, good plumbers, good taxi drivers.
Yeah, terrible history.
Terrible, very very sad history.
It is actually.
Poles.
No, I'm talking about polling.
P-O-L-L.
Not the people.
Not the great and noble people from Poland.
So yeah, just talk about Poles a bit.
Because like everything else in our world it seems now that it's been completely corrupted and you have to be extremely careful where something you could have kind of taken for granted just a few years back now you have to be extremely careful what you're looking at and I guess that is the world we're living in some sort of post-truth world or some sort of truth augmented world where I happen to think hope I'm not being massively arrogant here but having studied history
It puts me in good stead because when you study history you have to look at the source first and foremost before you really dig into what's being said look at who the historian is or the source and have a look at them first who they are where they're coming from what biases they might have once you've taken all that into account then look at what they're saying yeah And only then really can you start to even hope to be getting at what's really happening or what you're really being presented with.
Now hopefully a lot of people, most of our audience I'm sure, do that on a daily basis now with their news intake.
You have to do that with the news.
You can't just take what the mainstream corporate media news tell you.
Or even what we're We're biased but we're quite open about it.
That's part of the reason why our company exists is that we present you what we think but we don't try and dress it up as here's objective reality.
It's basically here's our opinion on something and it's up to you to basically judge us and sort of make a character judgment on us specifically the person presenting the segment.
Yeah.
Which makes it easier because you're not having to judge an entire media organisation which might be faceless.
You're just having to judge one person or a couple of people.
Yeah.
Which makes it a lot easier to assess whether it's valid or not really, doesn't it?
We're coming from the right side of the aisle, at least centralists.
Some of us are sensible centralists.
And some of us are more right-leaning than that.
But we're sort of open about it.
You can take it or leave it.
Sometimes you see coping leftists in our comments saying, you guys are no different when we have a go at the biased mainstream media.
And they're like, you guys are no different yet.
Yeah, we're no different.
Well, we are different.
At least we're being open about it.
We're not saying that we have the truth.
We don't say, hang on a minute, that's disinformation.
We're not the arbiters of objective truth.
We're not claiming to be that.
Speak for yourselves.
Except for Stelios.
He knows everything.
He's immaculate.
Immaculate at all times.
And this sort of now extends beyond just the news, fake news.
It extends to polls and polling.
Now I think you have to be extremely careful with any poll that you see and actually have a look at who is the poll, who's it been done by, what were their criteria, who owns the company even.
There are a couple of things to say here.
First of which is that Polls have a significant effect on election results and therefore there is an incentive in place to fiddle the numbers and there are ways of doing that via the methodology that should be visible to people who know about this stuff and I'm a loser that learnt this stuff at university.
And I know all about sort of research methodology, particularly the stuff used in polling isn't that complicated and therefore you can normally see it and a lot of the time the people carrying out polling for these companies aren't particularly good at this sort of thing and sometimes they do just make mistakes because they're often failed academics.
And so they tend not to be that great anyway, but sometimes there can be decisions made in, say, sampling or in their methodology that will almost certainly bias the results, but not in a way that you can put down to malpractice, you know, just an accident, but in ways in which you can say, well,
This has shaped the result in a very deliberate way except you can tell that because no one would make this mistake unintentionally.
So there's all sorts of things, I'd like to go into all sorts of details about how and why some polls can be inaccurate but then also there's a whole nother beast of just deliberately putting out false polls that are almost entirely fictional.
Right, and we're also in that world.
I think that's what we didn't have at least as much of a few years back, where people just sort of fairly openly, fairly nakedly just put out a completely false poll and just at least for a while it's swallowed by some people and that's enough to move the needle and that's all they ever wanted anyway.
So for example, Here's one thing, ABC put out a poll saying if you're only listening to this, Harris is on 52% and Trump's on 46%.
I guess that's nationwide.
Who's going to believe that?
Well, it turns out that it was, it turns out that quite quickly it was debunked.
Quite quickly it was shown that they, to be as kind as possible, were being partisan about how they'd done the poll in the first place.
Well it makes for good propaganda doesn't it because it gets presented as being objective just like here is what people are inclined to vote for and people vote tactically don't they it might might change how people vote maybe they're voting with the majority you know there's there is a psychological effect whereby people don't want to be in a in a minority group and there are multiple layers to that um but just even within a certain group identity you don't want to be in the minority group
by definition because it's disadvantageous you want to be in the majority group and by signaling these sorts of things these potential undecideds that are swayed by such sort of trivial things as that that could be significant i would believe that if the sample was basically the biden harris administration right yeah our actual team yeah They only polled her team.
Yes!
Right, exactly.
But that's the classic thing.
There's a million and one ways you can skew this stuff if you want to.
Just who you ask.
Also famously, loads of people lie when they're asked in the street or on a poll or anything.
They say what they think the person at the other end of the phone or whatever would like to hear.
Loads of people do that.
Well normally the bias in political polling is leftward.
And so people normally report being more left-wing when asked for polling than they actually are in terms of both, you know, their voting intentions and just their values more generally.
And that's a consistent trend known to political science.
It's pretty well established, in fact.
Lots and lots of people, when they actually get into the voting booth, both ways, both left and right, do differently to what they've told all their friends and family.
Quite often that's the thing.
Also in dating this happens, but this is a bit, you know... No, it usually happens.
A lot of people are, when asked, they are saying that they're attracted to a completely different kind of personality than the one they're actually attracted to.
Yeah, when I'm on a date I say, I'm a very successful banker.
But really, no, I'm joking.
I don't do that.
I've got a collection of Ferraris.
But I took the bus here today.
Like our audience quite often say they want white pills and they never click on them when we do them.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
Well, I just had a pop at our own audience.
Not a good idea.
Sorry, guys.
Sorry, guys.
I'm going to do a white pill next week.
I actually am.
I'm going to click on it when I do it.
I'm going to talk about space with Dan.
I'm going to Mars.
King Elon taking us back to the moon and Mars.
Anyway, back to polling.
It seems now we're in some sort of augmented truth age, where now polling is a battlefield.
But I have been wrong.
I mean, for example, a lot of the polls said that the Brexit, the Remainers were going to win easily.
They didn't happen.
If anyone remembers 2016, there was a 99% probability Hillary was going to win.
All of them were saying that.
Or nearly all of them.
Not all of them.
Ann Coulter came out early and said Trump was going to win, if you remember that.
And there was one or two polls that seemed to be quite close to reality, but nearly all of them, certainly all the corporate mainstream media, the morning of the vote before it was shown who'd actually won, it was Hillary 99% certain to win.
It's just wrong, just complete partisan stuff.
There's lots of examples.
I remember, I was quite young, but I remember when John Major narrowly beat Neil Kinnock.
In what, 1992?
And I remember then, even though I was a kid, all the news saying, there's no way Kinnock can lose.
It's a lot.
It's a complete slam dunk.
No?
I saw Peter Hitchens not too long ago talking about similar stuff from the 60s or the 70s doing similar things.
Polls can totally be not just wrong but way off.
So you've got to be very careful with how you conduct them because you're taking what ultimately is a very very small sample of something that could well also change from the time you take the poll until the day of the ballot.
And there are so many factors that influence people's voting intentions that it's almost impossible to account for all of them.
So they're sort of setting up to do a futile task in the first place.
The classic thing is how you frame the question.
Are you more likely to, for example, I'm massively exaggerating this, but there'll be people say like, are you more or less likely to vote for the lovely Kamala Harris or the evil Donald Trump?
Why don't you give us your answer?
Oh, the evil one, please.
Yeah, yeah.
So okay, if we go to the next tab there, I don't know who clicked it for me, Samson.
There you go, so this is just straight up, straight up super fake.
Super fake?
Super fake, yes.
Is that the Rick James song, like a discount version of it?
Uber fake, mega fake.
But for a while, Look, you know, over a quarter of a million or 330,000 views on something that was utterly, utterly fake.
And that would have moved the needle a tiny bit, right?
It would have done.
But look, you can see 89% of veterans are for Harris and only 9% for Trump.
It's comically, it's almost, you know, pretty much a laughable... Wounded vets 96% in favour of Kamala Harris.
Is that wounded in the head?
Yeah it's particularly well funny not funny haha funny crazy because Kamala Harris was on record as you know likening January 6th to 9-11 and Pearl Harbor one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen a politician say and Trump who's very pro-military I think he loves the military, the military love him, sort of a thing.
You know, one of the greatest militaries.
Everyone says it's the greatest military in the world.
It's just fake news.
Yeah, yeah.
And also they publish it not to just make a radical claim.
But Fox News, is that not right?
Fox News actually went with it at least for a while?
No, this isn't a real poll.
It's fake data presented as a Fox News poll.
I see all right okay so it's still shared by 330,000 yeah like there I think there are people um yeah that is showing large accounts asking whether it's real it's like I don't know I saw someone shared it on Facebook either way it'll pee them off which is kind of the point people know that it might not be legit and they share it anyway if it shows stuff that That confirms their bias.
Exactly, yeah.
It's funny, I see people use the exact same layout and font of a Guardian page and write whatever they want in it and ascribe it to somebody.
It's completely fake.
It is a bit funny.
Quite often that's for satire purposes though.
Oh yeah, completely for satire.
It's pretty transparent.
It's not like this where it's actually trying to pass off a poll as being legitimate.
But still not less plausible than the actual content of Guardian.
That's true, yeah.
Yeah, the best ones of those fakes are when it's close to what someone like Owen Jones or Diane Abbott would actually say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like when people Photoshop a picture to make the person look fatter, but only a little bit fatter, right?
I see Paddy Pimlett say that.
They photoshop him to look a bit heavier.
He says that's really annoying.
When they make him look obese then.
It's an issue of lightening.
How lightening.
Okay so if we go to the next one it's from the Mail Online.
I think this is you know much more accurate.
We're starting to get at least closer to real reality.
It looks like it will actually be quite close because I would have thought that Trump would be this far out would be polling and go on to win landslides in nearly every state.
The fact that Biden attached his name to the economy alone should be enough to lose Kamala the election.
I would have thought she'll get the places that are going to go Democrat regardless of almost anything like California or maybe even is it like Washington State in Oregon I think maybe not but certainly California you know lots of places on the east coast as well New England area that yeah all of that around there's blue and like DC and stuff So I would have thought that all the polls would show and it would go on to actually play out in reality that Trump would get, you know, 40 states or something and easily, easily win.
But it looks like perhaps that's not going to be the case.
It will be closer.
I still predict Trump would win because Kamala's such a car crash is so unlikable, right?
I mean, I got my biases again.
I'm not pretending I haven't.
I just think it seems most people dislike her.
I think that this is probably going to be a very unpredictable election.
I think that knowing what will happen and how things play out is very very difficult.
It depends how much the Democrats cheat.
Can't say that.
Can't we?
No.
But it's true.
We'll have to cut that out in post.
Or only put this on Rumble.
And make a note of the timestamp so our post production people can cut that bit out.
Where I mentioned reality.
Where I talked about reality.
I hate to do it because... No, no, fair enough.
No, no, no.
I agree with you.
That's the annoying thing.
But it's the censorship and... Whether they augment it without saying that.
I think the timepiece was Fortify.
Fortify, yeah.
Depends how much, if at all, the Democrats fortify their vote.
That's fine.
Okay, and so there are certain swing states where historically they've always been close and again they will probably be close again.
Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada.
Not some of the biggest states.
You know, Nevada, I know, only gets, what is it, four or six electoral votes or something.
But still, they all count.
They absolutely all count, especially, obviously, if it's going to be close.
You know, I don't think there's many in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and stuff, or even Arizona.
You know, Nevada and Arizona are giant states in terms of land area, but they're fairly, not all that densely populated.
So, you know, large desert and stuff.
We'll see how it goes, but it looks like, you know, according to different places, all different polls, it looks like maybe Harris is ahead in some places.
If we go to the next link, here's a website that just shows loads and loads of different polls.
And if you can see on the right hand side, you know, red is obviously pro-Harris.
Sorry, blue is Harris, red is Trump.
And if you just at a glance, A lot of them, you know, more than half are showing blue.
Well, a lot of these other ones, a lot of these are double ups.
Only the top of this is, the top ones here are sort of the most, and a lot of them do seem to be showing Paris.
Um, Harris in the lead in all sorts of places.
Um, there's this graph here I thought was interesting because it also shows the point at which Biden was cooed.
I was going to say quit when he was sort of Asked by God knows who, yeah, when somebody else decided his political career was just over now.
It shows that the polling seems to suggest, if you can believe it, that Harris has now got a lead on Trump.
So it's interesting I really did think if you know the polls were even close to being honest or real that Trump would just be sort of like the like this graph before here just consistently ahead and it's just a question of by how much?
Well it seems they have swapped here.
I also wouldn't trust real clear politics to be honest however I do think that Harris would be more popular than Biden because he was sort of publicly exposed as a corpse but then also that was only in turn to to put Harris as the candidate.
And so I still think that normal people are going to see what Harris has done and that she's a lunatic and part of the old man regime that ruined the economy.
And I don't think that she's going to be overtaking on Trump, who has precedent now to show that he made America energy independent here.
He didn't start any foreign wars.
He didn't behave like a dictator.
You know, it's not really going to work in the same way.
So I think that this polling should certainly be taken with a massive pinch of salt.
Definitely, and it is going to be interesting to watch this after the election.
You could do a segment after the election, if Trump wins.
I think he's going to win, personally.
That's my personal bet.
And if he wins it would be good to collect all the polling that shows Kamala Harris taking a lead.
I would have thought so.
This is the main thrust of this segment is that I wanted to say that I just sort of don't believe it.
I don't want to fall into the same Pitfall as last time when they had to release the Kraken to try and find out to what extent any, if any, cheating had gone on.
But these polls, I just don't trust them.
I mean, if you remember last time how sort of hardly anyone was turning out to Biden rallies.
Biden didn't turn up to many rallies himself.
Sort of the cliche was that he stayed in his basement and things and the popular swell of support for Trump seemed absolutely overwhelming.
Yeah.
And the same goes for Kamala because presidential elections, even more than general elections in the UK, is a bit like a popularity contest.
A lot of it is about the the top person on the ticket and whether you like them or not, whether you feel like you trust them or not.
It's much, much more than a general election in Great Britain, right?
And obviously Trump is a Marmite type figure.
You either love him or hate him sort of a thing.
Very British reference for American politics.
Anyone who doesn't know what that means.
You either really like him or you're sort of a never-Trumper till your dying breath.
But Kamala is sort of fairly, it seems, fairly universally disliked.
She's obviously obnoxious.
Within moments of hearing her speak, nearly always, she comes across as horrible and annoying and obnoxious.
Her political career has shown that she's a failure when it comes to winning popularity contests, right?
She shouldn't have been on the Biden ticket in the first place.
They parachuted her on there so they could have a woman of colour.
No one in the Democrat Party wanted her.
What is interesting is that she was, if I can remember correctly, she was the least popular among the Democrats.
And no Democrat wanted to jump in.
If they thought they were going to win the election, why wouldn't they jump in?
Right.
Right.
So if she does beat Trump this November, I would be surprised.
I would be surprised, but stranger things have happened.
Not allowed to say anything beyond that without getting in trouble ourselves, right?
That's right.
But I would be surprised.
OK, and I've got one last link.
I also need to very quickly say to you all before we finish this segment that we do have merch, Islander themed merch, On our merch store.
The Islander Magazine.
Great magazine.
A couple of great articles from my good self in there.
I think your article was good.
Oh, thanks.
I didn't pay Stelios to say that.
There's some good writers in there.
There's Rorik Nationalist, Morgoth.
Quite a few people.
Luca.
Who?
Luca Johnson.
Oh yeah, Luca Johnson's was excellent.
Lord of the Rings.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And we've got Islander themed merch on our store, which is going to be taken down in a week or so.
So if you want that, the window of opportunity is shrinking by the moment.
T-shirts, mugs, posters.
I really like the t-shirts personally.
Posters also look good.
We've got one in the office.
Okay, so.
And just to finish up then, I've got one last... Oh no, that was the last link.
That was it, yeah.
So that is it.
Okay.
No, you've got some comments down there.
Okay, which ones?
From Threadnaught upwards there.
Yellow, top.
Threadnaught, okay.
Threadnaught, and how much are you giving us?
Five bucks, thank you very much.
We polled ourselves and found that 71% of those polled want all citizens to have their faces stamped on by a boot forever.
You gov.
Yeah, there was a weird trend of 71% coming up a lot more than was statistically possible.
I think I calculated the probability that it came up that often.
It was like 0.0025%.
Yeah.
That was years ago now.
Don't trust YouGov.
It's a British one, for anyone that doesn't know.
Yeah, it's just... Well, it's owned by someone who's... Extremely suspicious.
I remember hearing about it... Oh, what was it?
I can't remember, but basically the person who started YouGov had some affiliation with a political party, explicitly.
So they had reason to be partisan.
Of course.
Bald Eagle 1787 says, Poles are just liars spread to lure groups into complacency.
The only Poles that you should trust are the ones who broke the siege of Vienna in 1683.
Yeah, good old Poles.
Very sad history.
Very sad indeed.
Why am I saying that?
Being a dick about it.
I don't know.
We like Poles.
It really is a terrible, very sad issue.
We joined WWII to help Poland.
That was our explicit reason to join the war.
Yeah, and ended up giving it to Stalin.
Yeah, that was a bit mean, wasn't it?
Sorry about that.
I didn't have any hand in that decision.
I wasn't alive, in fact.
I've got so much glare on this screen.
It says, uh... Red knot again.
God breath for third.
Oh.
No, you go ahead.
It says, the problem is that the media has to maintain, uh, that, that it is close to get the blue votes out of the house.
If they think they can't win, they won't bother.
Sorry, there's so much glare on the screen at that point that I can't read it properly.
You've got to get like that at this point.
Um, yeah, the final one... Did that make sense, what I said there?
Yeah, it did.
The pole manipulation is the statistics part of lies, damn lies and statistics, the third type of lie.
That's why I studied it.
Right, we've got video comments now.
And now, in honour of Rue the Day, here is a short meditative moment.
First, take a deep breath in.
And now let it...
Breathe out and repeat the mantra.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
A man has posted a meme about the riots in Lego City, UK.
This looks like a job for the Mobile Police Unit.
Build the Mobile Police Unit and save your city.
Track him down, caught in a fire ride, deny him his right to free speech and arrest him.
Now time to lock him up at the police station.
That is brilliant.
- You've got to break the prison block by releasing all the killers and .
Now lock up all the people who've posted memes.
You've just made Lego City a safer city.
The new Kia Starmer collection from Lego City, each set sold separately. - That is brilliant. - Thank you for sending that. - Have you ever noticed that a lot of Muslim men have got like a bowl haircut?
Yeah, it's hilarious.
As a bald man, I can't really take the mick out of other people's haircuts.
You can if it's a bowl.
I'd rather be bald than have a bowl.
And it seemed that in that, I saw that when he was talking about all the criminals being like this, a lot of them had bowl haircut.
That's just Lego, Jen.
Maybe I just saw that for myself and it wasn't really there.
It was just that Lego, wasn't it sort of 1960s and therefore they all have the sort of Beatles cut.
That's going to be co-opted now by leftists who are going to say about white supremacist culture in Lego.
Yeah, I hope they're not watching.
They're co-opting a medieval European peasant haircut.
The inbred Muslims.
They're balls.
I don't really seek out political conversation with people, but when it does happen, it always strikes me as how historically bereft the average person really is.
This whole taxation and entitlements thing is not only a historical anomaly, but a very young one, too.
And it's already rattling itself apart.
And yet most people are completely unaware of any other social order.
And yet it dates back no earlier than the 1960s.
Social entitlements to the Depression of the 30s and heavy taxation was an emergency measure for World War I, which here in Canada, at least, was promised in Parliament to be rescinded no later than 1921.
Any day now, I'm sure.
Yeah, well, wasn't taxation in Britain for the Napoleonic War- Income tax.
Income tax, yeah.
Why the government- I mean, I don't remember them working any of my hours throughout the week, so why they deserve it, I don't know.
Yeah, Mr. Pitt brought in the first income tax at the very end of the 18th century.
And I'll continue to scorn his name to this day.
And we're paying it to this day.
Scumbag.
Here's your gang sign for balance.
Take your second and third fingers.
Fold them down.
You will use your thumb and the fourth to close your nostrils.
Inhale through the left.
Close.
Exhale through the right.
Inhale through the right.
Close.
Exhale through the left.
Repeat as long as it takes to calm yourself and balance your energy.
If you feel the need to hold at any point, hold.
I don't know.
I think I always operate on one nostril.
Either the left or right.
Are you like a flamingo?
You're always like using one leg.
You're like balancing and then you just alternate.
I don't know.
Maybe you have a video for this next time.
I found that really difficult by the way because I broke my middle finger so it doesn't go properly anymore.
So it goes off to the side when I put it up like that.
It just looks like I'm flipping off the audience now.
Samson's swearing at me from the booth.
I'm like an Englishman.
A good Englishman.
I'm not too interested in actual mindfulness techniques.
If I need to calm myself down, I have a bloody cup of tea.
A cup of tea will calm me down.
A brew is what's good for you, right?
It's good for morale.
A cup of tea does work, yeah.
It's good for morale.
I enjoy flipping off the camera.
That calms me down.
I didn't mean it, don't worry.
Is that all the video comments?
Yes.
Okay, we are on to the written comments.
We've got a bunch of general comments.
North FC Zoomer, any advice for a noob where to start with British history for a general overview, Bo?
I think I know what's coming here.
What do you think I'm going to say?
Oh right, yeah, what was I going to say?
Yeah.
Subscribe to LotusEaters.com for as little as £5 a month, click on the history tab.
I've got my own show, Epox, where there's currently 174 episodes talking about everything from Gobekli Tepe, with Mr Josh Firm, aka The Firminator, all the way through to World War II era stuff.
Lots and lots of medieval stuff, lots and lots of stuff about the kings of England.
But, A real answer!
There's a great book by Sir Charles Oman, Professor Sir Charles Oman, writing at the very beginning of the 20th century, so it's totally not paused, it's just a history of England, I think it's called, by Sir Charles Oman, O-M-A-N, it's not a very English sounding name, but he's as English as you could get, he was a professor at Oxford, and his history is a great overview, so I recommend that.
Or the history of the English-speaking peoples by Sir Winston Churchill.
Also very good.
Again, long before wokeism or anything, so you don't need to worry about that.
Yeah, Churchill or Oman.
Or me.
Equivalent, right?
Yeah, yeah, basically the same quality.
Omar Checho and me, yeah.
So, Reader of the Day says, I enjoy Stelios correctly pronouncing European languages.
If he doesn't, no one will.
Thank you.
I can do French.
I can do a little bit of Dutch as well.
Sorry.
I want to read the next one.
Sure.
Roman Observer.
Top tier suits today for the hosts.
I like Bo's tie.
Finally not pink on pink.
That's what Roman Observer says.
I have done pink on pink a couple of times and got rinsed for it.
I'll try not to do that again.
Urban Observer really doesn't like it.
You need to wear a red tie to please the Roman.
Luna says, happy birthday Carl.
So yes, happy birthday Carl, if you're watching.
Happy birthday?
I think so, yeah.
Happy birthday, boss.
Carl was tweeting about it being his birthday, I think.
Probably why he's not at work today.
TMK OutOfContext says, Josh, have you considered inviting Thomas Dowling to do a segment about Return of Oasis?
I don't know what there would be to say about it really, just Oasis are back.
They're back because one of them had a divorce that was very expensive.
The end.
But no, I appreciate the idea and the suggestion.
It's just that I wouldn't know what to say about it really and Thomas is also such a massive fan that he would probably overreg the significance I think because I Don't think they're gonna I think it's interesting and I think it'd be historic to see them live however I don't think they're gonna be you know writing some amazing studio albums where everyone's gonna drop what they're doing and listen to them and
I think the two questions people ask about this is, number one, is Oasis a sort of containment?
Whether they're going to sing Don't Look Back in Anger and the whole country's going to... Blow up.
Blow up.
Yeah, Oasis are going to play out the death of the United Kingdom.
If woke is going to end by Oasis?
That's a second question people ask.
I think that sometimes things happen outside the sphere of politics and not everything is directly involved with some sort of political scheme.
Are you sure Josh?
I always find it a bit odd.
Not odd, that's not very kind, but just a little bit funny when people love music before their time.
I get it, like you love the Beatles for example, but like the Oasis were a bit before down the summer.
I happen to have already seen Oasis live in concert at Glastonbury 1995 when I was 14 years old.
I've seen ACDC.
Headlining.
I wasn't even born probably, unless it was in November.
Oh God, I'm so old.
It wasn't, it was in the summer.
Yeah.
Before you were born, God.
Anyway, um, but yeah this idea, it's interesting how much, I find it interesting how much the Oasis getting back together is such a thing, far beyond the music.
Because as an Oasis fan myself, not a crazy, crazy die-hard fan, but I was much more like Oasis than Blur, for example.
It's not even close, is it?
Right.
Because again, when I was in my, like, year 11 at school, that was that thing, Blur versus Oasis.
Blur were always a bit lame, weren't they?
Parklife versus Roll With It.
Parklife is rubbish, anyway.
Yeah, and Parklife won, actually.
It won.
Yeah, and Parklife's a crap song, I really do think.
It's really monotonous.
Samson says both are bad.
Definitely maybe and Morning Gloria are good albums.
I love the song Cigarettes and Alcohol.
It's great to listen to if you're going out on a night out.
Messy one.
But what I think is interesting is beyond the music, beyond just Oasis fans, it has become, the question has become all about containment and psyops and things.
It reminds me of some people who were trying to expect Taylor Swift to become sort of maiden of the right, inadvertently, unintentionally.
That's a weird take, isn't it?
Yeah, the whole thing was, I think the Democrats tried to push that Taylor Swift is with us and they're trying to capitalize on the fact that she's one of the best-selling musicians in the world at the minute.
And they're like, look at how popular we are.
Come on, kids, vote for us.
Yeah, but it was also from the right.
Some people who had high hopes of the offspring of Taylor Swift.
And what's that dude's name?
Cope.
I don't know.
Yeah, that dude.
American football.
Yeah, she's dating right now.
Kelsey something or other yeah, just Yeah, okay, so I think about all that gossip here Brian Tomlinson says hello bow.
I love you in the postcode lottery advert A bit camp and a bit red, but I recognize you anywhere.
I Don't know what that's a reference to but it sounds funny.
It's obviously just some bald guy, isn't it?
Oh dear Samson has confirmed it.
It's funny as a bald guy you can be compared to or likened to any other bald guy.
I'm growing my beard to look like Vsauce.
To be fair that's one you wouldn't be mistaken for.
But it's good in some ways because you're always going to be more anonymous.
As if you've got the sort of anonymity of generic bald guy.
You can get away with stuff can't you?
Just some food for thought.
Right.
Do we have some more time?
Yeah, can we have an extra five minutes?
Is it me or you?
It's me.
Continue then.
I was reading generic comments.
We had a bunch of them today.
Theodore Pinnick says apparently there's been an update to the result in Saxony.
They're claiming that there was a software error, which conveniently means that the AFD actually gets one fewer seat, which makes them just slightly too small to be able to block bills.
I did see this and it was a Remix News Twitter post, but I wasn't able to confirm it anywhere else, which is why I didn't include it.
So I need to have a bit more of a stronger verification for that.
That's why I didn't include it in the segment.
And I'm just waiting on that.
It could be the case that it is legitimate and Remix were just quick.
They're normally quite good.
But that was why I didn't include it.
And I'll read just one more because I've read quite a few.
Derek Powell says, for a group that fancies themselves as progressive and forward-thinking, politico and the like, keep using the same insults to the point where it's tiresome and annoying.
I certainly agree with that.
Yes.
Right, Stelios is a Freddo making machine.
Yeah, make Freddo the coffee.
Freddie making machine?
I don't know what they're on about.
Yeah, who's this Freddie guy?
I honestly don't get it.
I feel like you do get it.
I don't get what's being referenced there.
Freddie is a giant pile of excrement that was nearby the office.
Just let there by someone.
Oh, okay.
Not exactly a good Samaritan or something.
Okay.
And people christened it.
The original context was Stelios and a few other people were talking about the state of England and just how things are gross and you brought up the fact that, was it Pete named?
I think Pete.
I do remember now.
Right, I'm glad to see Elon Musk prove that he actually has principles, unlike Google who went from don't be evil to working for China real quick.
I think that's plausible.
Do you ever see Elon talking to Don Lemon and he says no what I want to do is do the right thing not be seen to be doing what I think others think is the right thing yeah and Don Lemon's just like What is this?
He's brainwashed.
He's also trolling Don Levin quite a lot.
Arizona Desert Rat.
If the US government couldn't get Elon to cooperate, what makes the Brazilian government think that he will cooperate with them?
Paul Neubauer.
It's an attack not on X but on the people of Brazil.
Absolutely.
Arizona Desert Rat.
Bo looks like a very friendly Austin Powers villain.
Okay.
Kevin Fox CamelToe has said on air that X should be shut down because it won't follow the same rules as Facebook.
That wouldn't be the same rules that have resulted in Mark F Furberg ending up in front of a Senate committee apologizing for interference in the last election.
Baron Von Warcock, Brazil has one of the finest, one of the highest murder rates in the Western Hemisphere and yet they're worried about VPNs.
Oh well.
Crazy.
Yeah, hate crime.
I like how you said finest as if, as in Trump.
Some of them are fine people.
Some Brazilians are not murderous.
Have you seen the one with Trump where he's talking about Nazgul?
He says, there's Nazgul, there's nasty Nazgul, I call them.
I'll show you the meme.
Right, rue the day, if Mariah's gonna manage the country for long enough to weed out all the inventive nerds who know how to bypass all these silly laws.
And Michael Dribblebiss.
Robert Reich is Dr. Miguelito Lovelace for fans of the old Wild Wild West TV show.
He's a short, power-mad genius who seems hell-bent on silencing any dissent.
And I have one more from Yakub Bogdanov.
Totalitarian government trying to strong-arm X into compliance complaining about unchecked power of tech companies is quite rich, honestly.
And also the people who follow them and try to whitewash them are just scums.
Do you mind reading some?
All I can see is the reflection of the ceiling.
Sure.
So for this segment Furious Dan says that any of the polls are close at all between the man who took a bullet for the country and the woman who opened its borders and got installed with no votes.
It's a dire statement about how many people are NPC programmed by the news.
I couldn't put it better myself, yeah.
Kevin Fox says, I love that recently Biden or any staffer who writes for him has been tweeting how interest rates are at their lowest over three years.
Not lower than four years ago though.
So all he's saying is we effed the economy, but we nearly fixed our mistakes.
Vote for us.
Yes we might be bad but we can self-correct.
So Justin B says, the pollsters are also careful to select the most left-leaning people.
They tend to canvas during the day when most people are working.
That's true actually, yeah.
Mostly the unemployed leftists and students are on the streets.
and online posters selectively present polls to people based on the answers they previously gave.
I used to have an account with YouGov and noticed they weren't sending me polls.
Emails stopped after a while when I went to log in and found out why.
I realised they had completely deleted my account and wouldn't let me make another.
Yes, apparently.
Classic YouGov.
I completely buy that that happened.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
No, I think that they're very much a propaganda wing.
Yeah, yeah.
71% of people agree.
Yes, they do, with me.
Colin P says, regarding polling, it's thanks to you guys that I signed up for YouGov, although I noticed that I don't seem to get any questions on politics per se.
Oh, well, there we go.
Two people.
We've got a sample of two telling us the same thing, which is probably more than some YouGov polls.
On that note, I think it's time to end the show.
So thank you very much for watching.
I hope you enjoyed it.
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